I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. I regret that copies of the Bill were not circulated beforehand, but it never dawned on me that the Opposition would endorse the Estimates which I have presented by failing to challenge a division.
Committee on Finance. - Central Fund Bill, 1955 — All Stages.
Leave granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to apply certain sums out of the Central Fund to the service of the years ending on the 31st day of March, 1955 and 1956.
Agreed that the further stages be taken to-day.
That is a very stupid remark for the Minister to make. It is really an extraordinarily stupid remark——
Schoolboyish.
——seeing that last year the Estimates were £108,000,000 and that all the groups now forming the Government were delighted to give them to us. Over the years, I do not remember there being a vote on them. Of course, we are prepared to give the Government these moneys.
Does the Minister realise now how stupid his remark was?
We are prepared to give them the moneys and we only hope they will spend them honestly and well. The only thing we are concerned about is the false pretences of which the Government are guilty in regard to this Book of Estimates — completely false. On its face the Book of Estimates is for moneys for the public services — the amount of money that is going to be spent by the Government on these supply services. One of the things to which I want once more to call the attention of the House is that, in relation to one sum — and I shall take only the one sum — the Book of Estimates is completely false to the tune of £933,000. It is wrong and crooked accountancy.
Why did the Deputy not vote against it?
To put a sum got from the American Government directly into a Department in order to decrease this figure is crooked accountancy. It is without precedent and the Minister tried to cover it up by saying, when I and other speakers from this side raised this matter, that we were showing a lack of appreciation of American generosity. I shall not go further, but if the Minister wants to be proud of that fact, at least he might have put this amount of money into the Budget, into the Exchequer Funds, and paid it out and not have slipped it into the Department of Agriculture simply with the object of reducing this figure dishonestly by a sum of £933,000.
I was very interested in some of the things I heard Deputy McGilligan speaking about to-day. He obviously is running away as hard as he can from the promises he made to the people about what this Government would do if they got into office again. Instead of this million-a-minute within a few minutes after taking over Government, it is now put on the long finger. The Taoiseach himself, of course, was one of the greatest advocates of this saving of a million-a-minute.
I never said anything of the sort. The Deputy is repeating again the lies he told here during the debate in spite of everything I said.
It is no trouble to him.
After the 1952 Budget, and even in 1953, he was talking about this saving of a million-a-minute and Deputy McGilligan raised it to £20,000,000 on the radio the night before the election.
He did not.
When it is boiled down the only thing they can claim to have saved is £2,750,000, and £1,000,000 of that, or near it, was arrived at by sticking into the Department of Agriculture a sum of money by way of Appropriation-in-Aid. That, of course, should have gone into the Exchequer and then out to the Department of Agriculture in the normal way.
Look at Vote 16. It says "Repayment by the British Government". It is put in exactly the same form.
It is not the same thing at all. These are ordinary items that have been in the Book of Estimates for the past 30 years. They are recurring items and come under the same category as bull licences and sales of timber and all the rest of it, but a sum of money of over £930,000, which had to be met last year by the Fianna Fáil Government from the Irish people, is now being met by the gift of the American Government. Instead of being accounted for as an ordinary Exchequer receipt, it is being slipped in, as if the Minister were ashamed of it, as an Appropriation-in-Aid. When the Government issued the Book of Estimates they did not take note that this is £933,000 less than it should have been if we had not got the American money.
The agreement, Sir, was that I would get all stages of the Bill by 5 o'clock. This is only the Second Stage.
I am sorry.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill put through Committee, reported without amendment, received for final consideration and passed.
This is a Money Bill for the purpose of Article 22 of the Constitution.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.3 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 23rd March, 1955.